Roberta slowed
down. "Where's a good bakery?" she called out.
They're all good,
said one. Roberta raised a raven eyebrow.
"I know one,
not far from here," volunteered another, acquiescing to her gaze, and as
soon as he started to explain how to get there ? turn right, left, left, right and after the second curve,
right again ? he could tell we'd already forgotten the
first turn.
"Follow
me," he said, jumping into his car and squealing around the corner like a
Formula One driver. And we were off, soon coming to a precipitous halt in front
of a nondescript storefront, at which point our guide honked, waved and raced
off again.
Puzzled, we
stepped out, and the smell of bread fell upon us like a benediction. A
gentleman stood in front as if he had been waiting for us. He nodded and
invited us in. He cut us each a thick wedge of warm focaccia
topped with tomatoes and olives that had sunk into the pillowy
dough. It was incredible.
Come, he said,
and led us to the back where two young bakers were taking huge loaves out of
the wood-burning oven. They're enormous, misshapen, hunchback breads that weigh
well over 10 pounds.
"That's
it," cried Roberta. The mother loaf. And this is
the Di Ges? bakery, founded
in 1838 and run by the same family for generations.
Soon an uncle, a
cousin, a nephew begin to show up to see the bread-crazed Americans, and we
were just that. This may be the best bread I've tasted in my life, made with
gold durum wheat and fragrant with yeast, a perfect accompaniment for the burrata and fresh sheep's-milk ricotta cheeses we picked up
at the Dicecca cheese shop around the corner.
Glorious seafood
BY then it was
dusk, and we were easily an hour and a half from where we were supposed to be.
But before we left, we bought one of those huge golden loaves and some of the
various focaccias. We took a photo of Roberta in
front with her bread and also with the entire Di Ges?
family and said goodbye.
In the car, the
scent of warm, yeasty bread enveloped us, and as we drove into the twilight, we
were getting hungrier and hungrier with no idea of where we'd eat.
It was dark.
Everyone except me and Roberta was nodding off when I saw the sign for Polignano a Mare, home to Da Tuccino,
a restaurant known for its crudi , raw seafood. We called to see if we could get in.
Yes, we were
told, if you come right now.
The exterior of
Da Tuccino is brutally ugly, and I began to wonder if
this was such a good idea. And what about the bread?
It won't taste the same tomorrow.
Leave it to me,
said Roberta as she explained our predicament to the tuxedoed maitre d' in
rapid-fire Italian. "Is there any way we could enjoy our bread with dinner
tonight?" I waited for an impassioned blowup but heard instead, " Non
c'? problema ," he said, whisking the big crumpled paper bag off to
the kitchen.
After inspecting
the glorious spread of whole fish and seafood laid out on ice, we took a table
in the nearly empty ballroom-sized room. Modesto
wrote down our order. Our bread arrived beautifully sliced and arranged on a
platter. This is heaven, I thought. To arrive tired and hungry and find such
hospitality is to experience the real and ancient Puglia.
Da Tuccino's antipasti crudi was
spectacular, plate after plate of raw scampi, sweet red shrimp with skeins of
roe, pearly squid, small violet-tinged octopus, clams, mussels and oysters. Orata carpaccio arrives put back
in the shape of the fish and topped with house-made prosciutto
di tonno (tuna ham). Supple orecchiette
stained black with squid ink and tossed with zucchini blossoms and small rosy
shrimp is fabulous. So is the spaghettini with scampi
and bottarga . We could have continued with grilled fish, but we had to
stop before we burst.
In any trip,
there is a fine balance between planning too much and planning too little, and
to have one day like that one, full of surprises and serendipity, colors the
memory of the entire trip. Hours drifted leisurely by as if there was no such
thing as time, except when it was time to eat.
For years, a
friend had been touting the food at Il Frantoio, a
bed-and-breakfast on a working farm (an arrangement known as an agriturismo) outside Ostuni, as
the perfect Pugliese experience. He started going
there when the farm with more than 4,000 olive trees had only a handful of
rooms. Now, 15 years after two escapees from the city, Armando and Rosalba Balestrazzi, created Il Frantoio, the number of rooms has expanded, requiring a
staff to run the place. It still maintains a quirky, well-tended cultivated
charm. Rosalba is such a gifted cook that visitors
from around the world descend on the farm for her meals, which are preceded by
an informal lecture from Armando on the history of the farm and Puglia's ancient food ways.
On the night we
stayed for dinner, Armando was in full throttle when one of the staff
whispered, "How much longer?"
"Twenty
minutes."
"Can you
wrap it up in 10?"
He nodded and
spoke faster, ending the presentation by sweeping a cloth off a collection of
jams and olive oils and some 30 infused liqueurs, all for sale and each bearing
the Il Frantoio label.
Dinner was a
multi-course extravaganza where vegetables took center stage. It was served in
a dining room with vaulted, arched ceiling. In summer, tables are set up in the
spacious courtyard and garden.
Antipasti
is an
art in Puglia,
and Rosalba's is no exception. Fagiolini pinti ,
skinny local green beans nearly a foot and a half long, are splashed with sweet
tomato sauce and embellished with ricotta. Fresh anchovies are stuffed with capers,
parsley and bread crumbs, and eggplant is rolled up with smoked mozzarella.
Each course employs a different single-varietal olive
oil from the farm, and Armando pairs each dish with local wines. It's
wonderful, but with so many guests and studied flourishes, it's a production
more worthy of a restaurant than a rustic farmhouse meal.
Because Rosalba performs just two or three times a week, the next
night we ate at Cibus, tucked away in the center of
nearby Ceglie Messapica,
just steps from the cathedral.
Owner Lilino Silibello has an
exceptional list of Puglia's
best wines, sturdy single-vineyard Primitivo,
full-bodied Negroamaro and interesting whites and
lighter reds, and everything that comes from the kitchen is honest and true. We
savored zucchini flowers stuffed with delicate sheep's-milk ricotta and mint
followed by ribbons of the summer squash dressed in fragrant lemon and mint.
Then came homemade cured meats, a fabulous carpaccio of milk-fed baby pig and a sunny yellow frittata laced
with squash blossoms and ricotta. And here too was wonderful pasta
? "priest's ears" ? similar to orecchiette but longer
and more open in shape and served with a tomato sauce enriched with roasted
meats.
We ate and ate,
but by the time we finished the lamb cooked in the wood-burning oven, we had to
cry uncle. But you have to try this caciocavallo , Silibello urged. This cheese is
made from the milk of a special cow that produces only a small amount. How
could we not? Much later, we wandered into the night, slightly delirious. Such
is the enchantment of Puglia.
Kicking up their
heels
CISTERNINO is a
small hilltop town with a spectacular panorama of the countryside. The streets
are narrow and maze-like, whitewashed like in Greece, but on weekends the historic
heart of town wakes up and parties. On the night we were there, a stage was set
up and musicians of all ages played traditional music. The whole town shows up,
grandparents, young families with toddlers and babies in arms, teenagers with
elaborately spiky gelled hair and the occasional tourist. That would be us.
Cisternino has an irresistible tradition ? a good dozen butcher
shops with restaurants attached and tables set out in the street. At Arrosteria del Vicoletta,
skewers of meats sizzle at a tilt against the wall of the wood-burning oven,
the better to get smoky and stay juicy. The day before, when I sussed out the place and saw the rudimentary wine list, I
asked the butcher with wavy blond hair, like a matinee idol from the '30s, if
it would be all right if we brought our own wine. Non c'?
problema. Roberta of course
insisted on bringing wineglasses too.
That night, there
was no end to the skewers of sausage links, pork rib chops, turcinieddhi
(little bundles of lamb's liver and innards), and braciola
(thin slices of pork wrapped around wild herbs) and lamb riblets,
all washed down with some inky dark Primitivo and
accompanied by vinegary green salad and melted smoked scamorza
cheese to sop up with our bread.
Traveling with
three other people can make it difficult to plan ahead, and by the time I found
a day to go south to Lecce to meet Silvestro Silvestori, who runs the cooking school the Awaiting Table
there, it was late into our weeklong trip. The school's website warns students
not to bring their cars to Lecce, but we
attempted it and quickly learned that driving in Lecce is easy. Finding your way is not. If
you're timid about asking for directions, you'll never get where you want to
go. Even with the Italian-speaking Roberta and race-car-driving Sonya, we got
lost all the time.
At a stoplight,
we managed to get the attention of a driver in the next lane, and we implored
him for directions. He stared off into space and, finding it impossible to
explain, told us to follow him. By now we knew the drill, and we set off on a
merry route zipping around squares, squirting around corners, a zillion turns
and then, miraculously, our meeting point Porta
Napoli, one of the old gates of the city, stood in front of us, with two
minutes to spare.
Silvestori grew up in the United States but moved back to Puglia several years ago
after earning degrees in jazz studies, sculpture and languages. He immersed
himself in the region's traditions and became a leading expert in Pugliese cuisine. He lives and works in Lecce's old town in a palazzo that dates from
the 16th century. A former stable is his teaching kitchen. Garlic and dried red
peppers and little lanterns were strung from the rafters. At two big work
tables, a group of women from Canada
were busy shaping pasta into small sombreros by flattening it over the top of a
wine bottle.
Silvestori collects recipes from
grandmothers and the old ladies in the villages around Lecce and the Salentine
peninsula to the south. Sometimes he invites guest teachers like Clifford Wright,
who's written a number of books on Mediterranean cuisine, or Nancy Harmon
Jenkins, who wrote "Flavors of Puglia."
He took a moment
to demonstrate how to make the most basic Pugliese
pasta, those adorable orecchiette . It's all in the gesture, he explained, how you roll the
dough off your thumb. And nothing, quite frankly, you could learn from a
cookbook.
That's the beauty
and my regret. Sadly, we had no time to stay, and as we left, he walked us past
the glorious honey-colored Baroque and Rococo buildings in the historic center.
Wherever he went, the fishmonger, the baker, the woman who runs the
bed-and-breakfast, called out a greeting.
It was a
beguiling farewell to Puglia
and just the right touch. I'm a romantic. I like to leave a place believing that
I'll be back. Without that hope, it would be too wrenching to say goodbye to
all the places I've fallen in love with over the years.....
Restaurants &
Shops, Cooking Schools, Hotels, Agriturismos,
Bed & Breakfasts at original Article
http://travel.latimes.com/articles/
la-tr-puglia25feb25